No, it’s not a description of how we are all feeling as we
plough on through the seventy third day of January, but a headline from the
front page of the Orkney Herald of 18th January 1955.
It’s a wild day here today as the tail end of Storm Éowyn arrived
last night; some staff have commented that matchsticks might be needed to keep
eyes open after a restless night worrying about roof tiles and being woken by actual
real scaredy cats (and dogs!). We are
very lucky here though to be north of the worst of this ‘once in a generation
storm’ and spare a thought for our friends ‘sooth’ who have borne the brunt of
it.
In our current archive display we turned our minds back
to some other extreme winter weather. Being
so far north, many expect Orkney to be cold and snowy in winter, but our
maritime climate and the impact of the gulf stream means that we don’t often
get our sledges out. The toboggans
would have been well used seventy years ago though when Orkney was paralysed by
wintry storms. A blizzard in mid-January
1955, followed by another a month later, trapped the county beneath snow which
drifted to ten feet deep. The islands
were brought to a standstill for ten days on each occasion.
On Wednesday January 12th heavy snow fell all
day, driven by 70mph winds. By early
afternoon, almost every road was blocked, cars were abandoned in deep drifts
and over 100 schoolchildren were trapped at schools across the county. The The Orkney Herald on Tuesday 18th January 1955 painted a bleak picture:
“The general picture
is one of isolation; town and country are separated from each other by deep
drifts of frozen snow, and hundreds of farms have become completely detached
units…
The paper reported that six snow-ploughs and 150 men
struggled in vain to open the mainland roads.
The Stromness to Kirkwall road was cleared for one hour on Saturday 15th
January allowing stranded schoolchildren to return home, before being filled
again with drifts.
“First contact
between Kirkwall and Stromness in two days was established by two men on Friday who foot-slogged it through the deep snow. They set out from Stromness on
Thursday afternoon and reached Kirkwall 24 hours later…
…They walked right
over one van without at first realising it was there. The snow rang strangely hollow beneath their
feet and on investigating they found they were on top of a Post Office van…
…The two
foot-sloggers did their good turn too when they pulled to safety sheep which
were smothering in drifts.”
In some areas, supplies were air-dropped by the RAF and the
lifeboats were also put to good use taking people to hospital and work, and transporting
supplies to areas which had been cut off by the snow. The
Stromness lifeboat was called out on Tuesday 18th January to
transport provisions to Sandwick in the West Mainland, which had been
completely isolated for 6 days, and four men rowed
out in two small boats from Skaill to meet it.
Freddie Isbister
and Jim Linklater collect supplies from the Lifeboat
L4095/4 614
L4095/2 614
Both photos by J S Baikie
One of the lovely things about working in the archive is the
satisfaction gained when we tie threads together and although we held several photos
of this event in our Copy Collection, we had no information about them. By using the local newspapers and a school
project from 1990 about the local shop (D70/12/2 Fereday Project, 80 Years of
Isbister Bros by Erin Davidson) we now have the date and the names of the hardy
rowers - Freddie Isbister, Jim Linklater Senior, Jim Linklater Junior and Tommy Spence.
Another chance comment helped us to gather more information
about the day the first blizzard hit:
The Orcadian,
Thursday 20th January 1955
One of the Archive’s regular users and volunteers, Patricia
Long, saw the display and reminisced about her mother’s experience. Kathleen Leask was one of the passengers on
this bus but wasn’t named in the newspaper report above. We are very fortunate that Kathleen’s
memories were recorded by her daughter, and serialised in Living Orkney
magazine.
“There was no sign of any snow until we were past
Finstown but the sky over Stromness was jet black. I’ve never seen a sky like
it. We came into the snow then and by the time we were passing Tormiston it was
so thick that we couldn’t see the telegraph poles at the side of the road.
Then, right at the foot of the kirk road, the bus got stuck in a drift.
“I think there were seven of us on the bus: me, John
Garson, Archie Bevan, Isa Robertson, two commercial travellers and an old wife
on her way home from hospital. She wasn’t going to be able to walk through the
snow so two of the men walked over the field to the farm of Barnhouse and two
of the servant-men there came with a blanket and carried her to the farmhouse,
“The rest of us followed and were welcomed into the
house by Andrew Rendall and his housekeeper Mrs Scollay. They gave us tea, made
us comfortable in the sitting-room and were making arrangements for the night
when my cousin, Jean Muir at the Stenness Post Office, rang saying she had two
spare beds, because her daughters, along with all the other country bairns at
the academy, were stuck in Stromness.”
Kathleen’s husband-to-be, Peter Leith, walked the
half-mile down the hill to the Stenness shop and Jean sent him to Barnhouse to
collect Kathleen. The snow had stopped falling by then so they managed the
quarter-mile walk through the drifts in the early evening without much
difficulty. Archive Bevan decided to walk with them and then kept going to
Stromness, arriving home very late that night.
The snow plough didn’t get through until Saturday and
the bus passengers weren’t the only travellers marooned in Stenness. A cartload
of wedding guests spent a couple of days at Tormiston, on their way home from
waving Robbie and Elsie Sutherland off at the airport and Mrs Heywood took in a
lorry load of council workmen at the Stenness Hotel.
The snow lingered for weeks and Stromness was
completely cut off, as the road was thoroughly blocked at the junction where
the Sandwick road meets the Kirkwall-Stromness road. A fishing boat carried
passengers and supplies between Stromness and Scapa and that’s how Kathleen got
back to work some days later.
From Living Orkney, ‘A
peep into the past’, Part 3
Pages 33-34, Issue 54, May 2010
Tying together the newspaper snippet with Kathleen’s
reminiscences gives a much fuller picture of the event. It would be lovely if we could also name the
poor lady returning from hospital too! The stranded wedding guests were also mentioned in the local papers:
Orkney Herald, Tuesday 18th January 1955
We are hoping to gather more information about these
blizzards from people who remember the events or have been told stories from parents
and grandparents through the years. If
you would like to contribute then you can reminisce below or send us your story
on archives@orkney.gov.uk and we’ll
add it to our display.
Stay safe and warm out there, and don't forget to tether your trampolines and barricade your wheelie bins!
